Five:
The Pattern Continues

Western
Alienation in the 1970s
and 1980s

The
West’s experience in Confederation
has centred on protest,
disappointment and constant
indications that Canada’s
parliamentary system of
government is tilted in
favour of Ontario and Quebec.
The subordination of the
West persists and Westerners
in the 1980s feel as strongly
about it as our parents
and grandparents did, possibly
the only difference being
our increasing determination
to affect politics, to be
more vocal, to get things
changed at last.

The
reality of our political
system is that Central Canada
is where national elections
are won or lost. Successive
federal governments have
thus tended to identify
the interests of the voters
living in Central Canada
with those of all Canadians.
In late 1987, Ontario Industry
Minister Monte Kwinter,
while criticizing Canada’s
proposed free trade agreement
with the United States,
asserted: "…if it’s a bad
deal for Ontario, by extension
it’s a bad deal for Canada."
His quip indicated that
little had changed in a
century-old attitude held
by many Ontarians that what
is good for them is also
good for Canada as a whole.
How can Canadian federalism
preserve and protect regional
interests and unite Canadians
everywhere, if it is constantly
undermined by the assertion
that what suits one province
suits all?

In
a speech on "The West in
Confederation" last year,
I quoted two prominent Westerners
to contrast the past and
present in our region in
terms of expectations, hopes
and realities of life. In
the mid-1970s, Peter Lougheed
described the Western Canada
he saw developing: "I think
it will be a stronger part
of Canada a decade from
now, both in terms of population,
in terms of distribution
of income, in terms of spending
in a more balanced industrial
economy. I think the West
will have more confidence
and hopefully more input
into decision-making nationally....
Canada will be a stronger
nation, because we’ll be
a stronger West."

The
Edmonton publisher and western
nationalist Ted Byfield
described our region’s situation
in mid-1987 thus: "...something
is grievously wrong in Western
Canada. Farmers can’t afford
to seed their crops, mines
are closed, oil rigs lie
derelict, shipyards arc
idle, food banks are besieged,
the savings of many lifetimes
have vanished, homes have
lost their value, and a
host of unemployed burst
the welfare rolls of every
town and city.

The
creation of the Reform Party
of Canada in the West under
the slogan "The West wants
in" reflects the disillusionment
of some Westerners with
all three traditional parties.
It is also another cry of
frustration from a forgotten
child of Confederation.
Earlier efforts to bring
the region fully into national
decision-making have failed,
for some Westerners at least.
Central Canadians, they
say, will not even try to
understand western alienation.
There are, and always have
been, more important matters
of national interest to
most residents of Canada’s
heartland.

A
number of issues arising
in the 1970s and 1980s ominously
increased western discontent
with the federal government.
The following is a discussion
of some selected policies
of governments of different
political colours that have
particularly intensified
alienation in Western Canada.
Essential to western objections
to all of them was the conviction
that each was decided by
a central government, centrally
controlled, for the benefit
of the centre -- Ontario
or Quebec or both-- and
imposed by Ottawa on the
western provinces regardless
of the legitimate needs
and wishes of Western Canadians.

Energy
Blitzkrieg

It
is often forgotten now that
the national Liberal party
was historically strong
in Western Canada; as recently
as the 1953 election, it
won 27 of 59 western seats.
Pierre Trudeau and his Just
Society and One Canada,
blended with his iconoclastic
personal style, were attractive
to many Westerners during
the 1968 election campaign.
Trudeaumania in fact won
for the Liberals 16 of 23
seats in B.C., 4 of 19 in
Alberta, 2 of 13 in Saskatchewan,
5of 13 in
Manitoba and the only seat
in the Northwest Territories.
Winning eleven seats on
the Prairies, which during
the previous four elections
had voted almost as one
with John Diefenbaker, provided
an excellent opportunity
for Pierre Trudeau to break
the existing political mold
in the West.

How
the Liberals destroyed their
political base both federally
and provincially in Western
Canada between 1968 and
1980, when they won but
two of the West’s seventy-seven
constituencies, has been
well chronicled. More than
anything else, their National
Energy Policy (NEP) and
constitutional package reinforced
the western suspicion that
Pierre Trudeau and his party
regarded our region as a
continuing colony of Central
Canada.

In
1974, as the Arab and other
oil producing countries
began to raise oil prices
from about $4 (U.S.) a barrel
to $11 and later much higher,
oil became the focus of
western differences with
the Trudeau government.
Ottawa’s initial response
to oil-related events in
the world was to impose
an export tax on the more
than one million barrels
of oil a day which Western
Canada was selling to the
U.S., and to freeze temporarily
the domestic price of oil.
Alberta premier Peter Lougheed
replied that the only reason
for exporting oil to the
U.S. at all was that, continuously
since the 1960’s, successive
federal governments had
refused permission to extend
a western oil pipeline to
Montreal on the premise
that it was a little cheaper
for Canadians east of the
Ottawa River to buy oil
from the Middle East or
Venezuela. A consequence
of this myopia in Ottawa,
argued Lougheed, was that
a number of Canadian-owned
oil companies which could
not afford to operate at
other than full capacity
had been forced to sell
out, mostly to American
oil companies.

Lougheed
noted that as recently as
January of 1973, the federal
Energy Minister, Donald
Macdonald, had again refused
an Alberta government request
to extend the oil pipeline
with the usual reasoning
that it was cheaper to buy
offshore oil. "It is my
understanding," wrote Macdonald
to the Alberta government,
"that the relative cost
disadvantage of using Western
Canadian crude in lieu of
offshore crude at Montreal
refineries at the present
time, is greater than when
this matter was considered
by the Borden Commission."

"What
the federal government said
in effect," concluded the
Alberta premier, "was that
it had weighed Alberta’s
needs for markets against
the economic advantages
to Eastern Canada, and decided
against us."

On
the principle of an export
tax on oil itself, Westerners
wondered why the non-renewable
oil of Alberta and Saskatchewan
was the sole Canadian export
to be subject to a federal
tax, when renewable energy
exports such as electricity
were not similarly taxed.
The federal government’s
reply was essentially that
oil was unique; Westerners,
having been discriminated
against so often in the
past by Ottawa, were mostly
unconvinced. At the federal-provincial
conference on energy held
in Ottawa in January, 1974,
the shared scepticism of
all three prairie delegations,
headed by Peter Lougheed,
Edward Schreyer and Allen Blakeney, grew. The federal
participants were, among
other things, badly prepared.
Only Premier Dave Barrett
from British Columbia remained
apart from the other western
premiers. He called, as
did the national NDP leader
David Lewis, for the gradual
nationalization of the Canadian
oil industry.

The
National Energy Program

The
National Energy Program
(NEP) was introduced in
the House of Commons by
Marc Lalonde eight months
after the Liberals defeated
the Conservatives in the
1980 general election.

The
Clark government was thought
by many Westerners to have
lost the election because
of its campaign to move
the domestic price of oil
and gas toward international
levels. Progressive Conservative
proposals to soften this
by subsidies to farmers
and fishermen were doomed
from the start by a quixotic
proposal in the defeated
Crosbie budget to increase
taxes on gasoline by 18
cents a gallon at the pump.
Most residents of Ontario,
Quebec and Atlantic Canada,
and some from Western Canada,
understandably voted for
the more comforting "made-in-Canada"
price promised by the Liberals.

The
Liberals’ NEP contained
both an announced and an
undeclared set of objectives.
The four public ones seemed
the soul of reason: greater
energy self-sufficiency,
conservation, "nation-building"
and Canadianization. The
unspoken goal was clearly
continued Liberal party
hegemony in Central Canada
at the expense of Western
Canadians generally and
Albertans in particular.

The
program would achieve energy
self-sufficiency partly
by incentives intended to
redirect exploration and
development away from the
western provinces toward
areas in the North and off
our coasts, which were controlled
by the federal government.
This was hazardous because
it requires several years
to bring an oil well into
production and very few
commercially-recoverable
discoveries have been made
in the Beaufort Sea, the
Canadian Arctic and off
the coast of Newfoundland
and Labrador. As these tax
incentives were unavailable
to foreign-owned firms,
a number of companies moved
approximately 200 drilling
rigs (each employing about
200 persons) to the United
States. This caused some
observers to conclude that
the NEP was not concerned
with petroleum self-sufficiency
at all. The real goal was
for Ottawa to continue to
purchase off-shore oil at
$37 (U.S.) a barrel as of
1980 from sources such as
Libya and Venezuela while
at the same time refusing
to buy it from a good number
of capped western wells
for $18 a barrel. When the
international price of oil
fell in 1982, this view
became especially plausible
in Western Canada.

The
NEP’s conservation feature
was praised initially in
every part of Canada, including
the West. Both Western Europe
and Japan were demonstrating
that nations could reduce
their energy consumption
without reducing significantly
either their manufacturing
efficiency or their standard
of living. Some of the NEP
programs, such as grants
for better home insulation
and for converting to natural
gas heating, were excellent.
Unfortunately for the authors
of the NEP, price is the
major factor determining
the amount of oil and gas
used by both individuals
and commerce. In keeping
domestic oil prices across
Canada at about half of
international levels between
1980 and 1984, the government
ensured great waste. A longer
term consequence of this
cheap energy to both industry
and agriculture was that
both sectors were able to
postpone investing in the
more efficient machinery
with which competitors around
the world were retooling.
The future international
competitiveness of the exports
from every region of Canada
was harmed by the NEP.

Defenders
of the NEP agree that one
of its objectives was to
establish the leadership
of Ottawa in the energy
sector. The means chosen
was a bold attempt to create
a new community of energy
leaders with a primary loyalty
to the federal government.
This group was to join industrial-financial
elites in Toronto and Montreal
who have historically identified
closely with Ottawa because
of various federal measures
such as the Bank Act. The
NEP was thus profoundly
anti-western because until
1980 our energy industry
was one of the very few
sectors centred in Western
Canada. It was, to many
Westerners, as if a national
government with no elected
representation on either
coast had told our east-
and west-coast fisheries
that they should relocate
their industry decision-makers
to Ottawa.

A
major goal of the NEP was
the reorganization of energy
industry ownership. As other
governments of energy-producing
nations had done during
the 1970’s, the NEP took
advantage of the rapid rise
in world petroleum prices
to buy out some foreign-owned
parts of the Canadian energy
industry. To persuade those
unwilling to sell to do
so, the NEP went well beyond
what other programs of industrial
democracies had done. It
created tax incentives and
prohibitions which favoured
locally-owned oil firms.
The best known of these
was the 25% "back-in" provision
through which Ottawa took
an automatic fourth of the
revenues from any oil or
gas discovery made on lands
controlled by Ottawa. Among
other things, the government
of Canada was accused of
legislated theft. Following
an avalanche of protests
when the back-in was initially
applied to expensive discoveries
already made, compensation
for approximately a quarter
of such expenditures was
made by the government.

During
the first ten months of
the NEP, the outright discrimination
against foreign-owned firms
was so successful that foreign
ownership dropped from 74%
to about 66%. Canadian companies,
such as Dome Petroleum,
the Canada Development Corporation
and Petro-Canada, made huge
buy-outs of foreign-owned
oil and gas properties.
The means used to achieve
this Canadianization were
judged by the American and
British governments to violate
Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) resolutions on investments,
which clearly banned member
discrimination against foreign-owned
companies. As the American
academic Charles Doran put
it, "The American counter-response
was that Canada was now
‘on the varsity’, meaning
Canada now had full economic
summit membership, and it
therefore had to abide by
the rules that the majority
of the OECD countries observed
ininvestment and
trade matters." Many foreigners
concluded that the NEP was
part of a general campaign
against foreign investment
of any sort.

In
many western minds, the
key goal of the NEP was
to keep Central Canada on
the Liberal side of the
political fence by pursuing
a consumer-oriented oil
strategy. Rather than creating
a policy which attempted
to balance the interests
of both the producing West
and the consuming East,
Trudeau’s government came
down all but entirely on
the consumer side. The Liberal
party, having learned to
govern with virtually no
representation from the
West, wished to be seen
as the defender of Central
Canada regardless of economic
consequences in Western
Canada. Indeed Marc Lalonde
in a candid moment later
confessed:

"The
major factor behind the
NEP wasn’t Canadianization
or getting more from the
industry or even self-sufficiency.
The determinant factor was
the fiscal imbalance between
the provinces and the federal
government.... Our proposal
was to increase Ottawa’s
share appreciably, so that
the share of the producing
provinces would decline
significantly and the industry’s
share would decline somewhat."
The Calgary economist Robert
Mansell has calculated that
the artificially low domestic
price of oil since the early
1970’s cost Albertans approximately
$60 billion.

The
results were devastating.
The number of oil wells
drilled throughout Canada
dropped from 9,188 in 1980
to 7,186 in 1981, and the
number of drilling rigs
in service across Canada
fell from 650 to 450 fairly
soon after the NEP was introduced.
Thousands of jobs in Western
Canada were lost, primarily
in the drilling and service
sectors of the energy industry.
Proposed mega-projects such
as the Alsands plant at
Fort McMurray were cancelled.
Numerous western businesses
went into bankruptcy. Many
careers and families were
broken; home mortgages were
foreclosed in large numbers.
The respected Economist
magazine of Britain
during the summer of 1982
summed up the NEP in politely
brutal language: "The NEP
has come close to wrecking
an industry that until October,
1980 was drilling like fury
finding enormous volumes
of gas and much new oil,
creating jobs and investment
all over Canada and increasingly
using Canadian-owned capacity
in exploration and management....
The NEP drove Canadian exploration
and service companies into
the United States until
only 150 drilling rigs were
left, the lowest number
since the 1960’s deCanadianization,
in effect. Owners of capped-in
gas wells had big debts
and no cash flow. Oil serving
companies in Alberta withered
into bankruptcy."

The
NEP was loathed even by
Western Canadians who had
no direct daily contact
with the energy industry.
It provided a major impetus
to both separation and alienation
sentiments in the West.
As a federal program which
blatantly discriminated
against the western provinces,
maintained the domestic
price of conventional oil
and gas resources at about
half the world price, and
subsidized the consumption
of imported oil, it probably
dashed for a generation
the political hopes of federal
Liberals throughout Western
Canada. In fact, however,
the NEP was in significant
respects an intellectual
product of the New Democrats,
particularly the Canadianization
provisions. For a short
period after its introduction,
the NDP energy spokesman
in the House of Commons,
Bob Rae, had a difficult
time in distinguishing his
party’s policy from that
of the Liberal government.

James
Laxer, the Research Director
of the federal NDP, described
his party’s dilemma over
the NEP in a 1984 report
to its federal caucus as
follows: "The NDP faced
a dilemma. Should it allow
a progressive, nationalist
policy to become intolerable
because it received only
criticism and no support?
Or should it give the programme
critical support and face
the renewed Tory charge
that the NDP was in bed
with the Liberals? Already
under fire because of its
stand on the constitution,
the NDP chose the first
option. It attacked the
NEP as ‘phoney nationalism’,
charging that the programme
was simply a corporate giveaway
because it included the
Petroleum Incentive Programme
(PIP) grant to Canadian
owned companies."

By
the time of the 1984 general
election campaign, the NEP
had become an orphan to
both Liberals and New Democrats,
although by 1988 a position
paper of the federal New
Democrats appeared to some
Westerners to call for the
resurrection of the NEP.

CF-18
Debacle

The
CF-18 aircraft maintenance
contract issue today continues
to trouble residents of
all four western provinces,
primarily because most of
us placed our confidence
in Brian Mulroney at the
end of the 1984 election
campaign, hoping that justice
for all regions would result.
Much of a positive nature
has been done by his government.
The NEP was removed in favour
of the Western Accord, the
Federal Investment Review
Agency was defanged, the
problems of western agriculture
received new attention,
and Western Canada generally
for the first time since
1958 enjoyed a place in
the political sun.

The
CF-18 issue arose during
1986 after the British-owned
Ultramar Canada closed a
65-year-old Montreal refinery
it had bought from Gulf
Canada. The resulting loss
of 350 jobs in East Montreal
caused an uproar for weeks
afterwards in the House
of Commons. Prime Minister
Mulroney appointed a ministerial
committee, headed by Robert
de Cotret, to consider ways
of fostering growth in the
Montreal region. The pending
contract to maintain 138
CF-18 jet fighters, which
had been purchased from
the United States in 1980,
became for de Cotret a convenient
means of creating future-oriented
jobs in Greater Montreal.
A major obstacle was the
fact that a team of 75 technicians
from the three federal departments
involved had already decided
that the tender by Bristol
Aerospace of Winnipeg, a
1,500-employee business
owned by Rolls Royce, was
better in terms of demonstrated
expertise and about four
million dollars cheaper
than the competing bid by
Canadair of Montreal.

Westerners
know that the aircraft industry
in the U.S. is almost entirely
located in western states,
mostly Washington and California,
whereas in Canada most of
it is now in Toronto and
Montreal. Air Canada, for
example, began in 1937 in
Winnipeg as the geographical
centre of the country but
later moved its head office
to Montreal. It also moved
a maintenance base to Montreal
from Winnipeg in the late
1960’s, uprooting several
hundred Winnipeg families
in the process. That Western
Canadian sensitivities about
the industry were acute
was something many members
of the Mulroney cabinet
simply never seemed to understand.

In
the spring of 1986, following
the inter-departmental assessment,
de Cotret as president of
the Treasury Board overruled
the recommendation, and
ruled that Canadair would
obtain the contract. Almost
four months of feverish
lobbying by Quebeckers followed.
Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa
met with the prime minister
in the early fall about
the matter. The full Treasury
Board of six ministers,
including only one from
Western Canada (Frank Oberle),
decided finally in October
that Canadair should have
the contract. The decision
was announced by de Cotret.

The
reaction in the West was
both immediate and uniformly
vehement. Had the integrity
of the tendering system
disappeared? Had Bristol
not submitted both a cheaper
and technically superior
bid? The president of the
Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce,
John Doole, declared: "Winnipeg
has a good sense of what’s
right and wrong and we have
long memories...nothing
has changed. The basic political
system still heavily favours
the mass block of the eastern
provinces." Bristol indicated
that it would be required
to lay off 100 employees
in its Winnipeg aircraft
maintenance division, and
that it would probably sue
Ottawa for the $5 million
it had spent in preparing
its bid in good faith. More
bad news came when it was
revealed that Canadair,
whose competence was in
building aircraft rather
than maintaining them, would
have to spend $30 million
to purchase the technology
from Bendix-Avelex of Toronto,
which itself had been an
associate in the Bristol
tender. The taxpayer would
have to pay for this. Many
Westerners concluded that
on this issue at least the
Mulroney government was
indistinguishable from the
regime it had succeeded.
James Richardson of Winnipeg,
a former Liberal Defence
Minister, was blunt: "The
CF- 18 decision is going
to be one of the landmarks
leading to a greater degree
of independence. Westerners
are being prevented by the
greed of Ontario and Quebec
from building an advanced,
industrial and technological
society on top of their
great agriculture and energy
base."

Every
indicator of western public
opinion on the decision
taken afterwards showed
overwhelming rejection.
An Environics Research Group
poll done not long after
the CF- 18 decision was
announced found that "84
percent of Western Canadians
-- the highest of any area
of the country -- think
the Government does not
treat all parts of Canada
equally." An Angus Reid
poll released in November
1986 showed that in B.C.
71% of those surveyed said
it was an unfair decision
and in the Alberta and Manitoba-Saskatchewan
region, 60 and 67% respectively
condemned the decision.
Only six percent saw it
as fair in both Manitoba
and Saskatchewan. The only
national survey indicated
that 46% of the people across
the country felt the award
was unfair, while only 29%
said it was fair. The
Calgary Herald’s editorial
comment indicated the bitterness
in the West: "Once again,
the West is excluded by
the power brokers.... Instead
of a national government,
we have national decisions
made on a selfish regional
basis for purely political
reasons. There is nothing
unusual in that. Just add
it to the long catalogue
of injustices done to the
West."

Peter
McCormick and David Elton,
Alberta professors of political
science and serious spokesmen
for the West, singled out
the National Energy Policy
(1980), and the CF-18 contract
decision (1986) as the issues
in this decade "which have
particularly infuriated
Canadians, and which highlighted
with unusual clarity the
West’s powerless quasi-colonial
status within Confederation.
For many, they have come
to symbolize national unfairness
and regional impotence.
Both decisions dealt a serious
blow to the region’s economic
future, and both were made
by a federal government
to whom other considerations
were simply more important
than the economic prospects
of the West." Additional
salt was added to the wound
earlier this year when departmental
documents indicated that
the additional cost to all
taxpayers of awarding the
contract to Canadair over
Bristol was approximately
$26 million dollars, not
the much smaller amount
implied by de Cotret’s comments
at the time of his announcement.
In early 1988, a $250 million
contract for heavy duty
military trucks was awarded
to Urban Transport Development
Corporation of Kingston,
Ontario. Another bidder,
Bombardier Inc. of Montreal,
had committed itself, if
successful, to build the
vehicles at Cochrane, Alberta.
The bidding process functioned
cleanly on this occasion,
but many Westerners noted
that when a western firm
had submitted a better and
cheaper bid on the CF-18
contract, special considerations
were invoked to site the
work in Central Canada.

Broadcasting
Central Canada

Many
Westerners think the English
language television service
of the Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation should be called
the Toronto Broadcasting
Corporation. Although the
CBC’s overall appropriation
from all Canadians for 1986/87
was $782.7 million, approximately
10% of the complete English
television programs shown
nationally originated from
outside Metropolitan Toronto.
As of late 1987, CBC president
Pierre Juneau conceded to
me that only 16% of the
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
permanent staff lives in
the prairie provinces and
British Columbia. Based
on the corporation’s operating
budget, 10.7% of its funds
were directly allocated
to components west of Ontario.

The
corporation’s local stations
are permitted only about
an hour daily for local
news and current affairs
in contrast to CBC English
radio, which allots seven
or eight hours daily in
prime time for local programs.
The result is that virtually
everything appearing on
the screen in prime or any
other time is chosen by
CBC staff in Toronto. "The
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
has an important and unique
task -- guarding our cultural
heritage and explaining
us to ourselves," observes
western historian David Bercuson. "It is difficult
to see how this can be done
as long as the corporation
continues to dictate taste
and ideas from Toronto."

The
virtual elimination of regional
television broadcasting
has evolved gradually. Locally
planned programs that reflect
the real flavour of life
in each region and reflect
community creativity nationally
have all but vanished on
our so-called national broadcasting
network.

A
Committee of Inquiry on
the National Broadcasting
Service was established
by the CRTC in March 1977
to determine how the CBC
was fulfilling its mandate,
particularly with respect
to public affairs, news
and information programming.
The Chairman of the CRTC
at the time, Harry Boyle,
concluded: "By overcentralizing
production and programming
in Toronto and Montreal,
and by the orientation of
the CBC to events in and
around those centres, the
CBC has failed to serve
‘the special needs of geographic
regions’.... The CBC has
thereby, in the Commission’s
view, failed in its very
important responsibility
to ‘contribute to the development
of national unity’."

The
chapter of Boyle’s report
entitled "Cultural Apartheid"
includes the line: "The
regions of English Canada,
from sea to sea, exist chiefly
during the summer vacation."
The Commission inquiry judged
that centralizing the CBC
in Montreal and Toronto
was one reason for its failure
to include adequately all
parts of the country. Some
letters from citizens across
the land were also quoted
in Boyle’s report. A British
Columbia resident wrote:

"Regional
access, at least in the
West, has become more limited
with each passing year.
It is now practically non-existent.
Local writers and producers
have largely disappeared.
Toronto selects, Toronto
dictates, Toronto produces,
and the talent pool shrinks
accordingly." Another voice
from British Columbia put
his point even more forcefully:
"They have sowed alienation,
and will reap full-scale
separatist movement eventually
in every region.,’

More
than ten years have passed
since the Committee of Inquiry
published its report saying
clearly that the CBC was
failing to foster Canadian
unity. Has the Corporation
taken the necessary actions
to respond to the criticism
expressed both by the CRTC
and the public? The Caplan-Sauvageau
Task Force on Broadcasting
Policy reported to the Minister
of Communications in 1986.
"No experience during our
year-long work," it said,
"touched us as deeply as
hearing the submissions
on our tours of eastern,
western and northern Canada.
The notion of regional alienation
so often invoked as a bloodless,
abstract cliché in Toronto,
Ottawa and Montreal, came
alive with passion and visceral
reality."

The
Task Force spoke of the
current concerns of Canadians
everywhere who want to be
better reflected by the
public broadcasting system
and who want more opportunity
to participate in it. It
went on: "There is widespread
feeling that our broadcasting
system, like so many other
Canadian institutions, reflects
reality largely as it is
understood in Toronto and
Montreal. Similarly, there
is strong belief it also
reflects the mainstream
elites of central Canada.
As a result, Westerners,
Easterners, Northerners,
women, natives, ethnic groups
and minority groups in general
feel that Canadian broadcasting
neither belongs to them
nor reflects them."

During
1985, Calgary political
scientist Barry Cooper supervised
five students who during
a four-month period monitored
four of the corporation’s
major AM radio network shows:
As It Happens, Sunday Morning,
Morningside, and The House.
Over 78% of the 1,400 stories
examined originated in Central
Canada. The obvious solution,
notes Cooper, is to allot
all regions more input into
national shows in both production
and broadcast.

Charles
Feaver, senior policy advisor
to the Manitoba Communications
Department, complained to
the House of Commons Communications
Committee in mid-1987 of
excessive CBC program centralization
in the two central provinces.
According to him, "Ontario
and Quebec, with 62% of
Canada’s population, spent
81% of CBC-TV ‘s combined
network and regional budget.
By contrast, Manitoba, with
4.2% of the population,
spends 2.6% of the budget,
primarily on programs produced
for distribution within
this region. Manitoba’s
weekly contribution of regularly
scheduled programming...
for the network totals an
hour and 15 minutes, with
none scheduled in prime
time."

Douglas
Smith, Associate Deputy
Minister of the Saskatchewan
Communications Ministry,
also confronted the House
Committee on regionalism
in national broadcasting.
"How," he asked, "can we
exercise our right to express
ourselves to the rest of
the country when the CBC,
for example, spends 70%
of its program production
budget in central Canada
and a paltry 30% on regional
broadcasting in the rest
of the country? The CBC’s
own budget figures show
that Saskatchewan’s taxpayers
contribute nearly 3% of
CBC’s budget, yet the television
program costs by province
show that less than 2% of
the programming budget is
spent in this province."

Canada’s
aboriginal peoples voiced
concerns about the failure
by the CBC to reflect their
unique identity. Maria Campbell,
a producer and writer with
Saskatchewan’s Katip Aim
Media Production, said:
"We find that as an independent
native production house
we really are the forgotten
people.... A real problem
for us as an independent
house the availability of
developmental moneys, the
unavailability in a lot
of cases for broadcast time."
Northern Canadians had only
a slightly different perspective.
Ernie Lennie, Vice-President
of the Native Communications
Society of the Western N.W.T.
(serving 28 western Arctic
Dene and Métis communities),
told the same hearing: "Communications
in our region are dominated
by forces and agencies that
do not reflect the culture
and the society of the Dene
and Métis people who are
in the majority."

The
same basic message was heard
at hearings at eleven public
forums sponsored by the
Canadian Association for
Adult Education in the Spring
of 1987. Audiences in Western
Canada evidently returned
again and again to the need
for our national public
broadcasting network to
reflect local needs and
regional aspirations. Fil
Fraser, an Edmonton broadcaster
and a member of the Caplan-Sauvageau
Task Force on Broadcast
Policy, spoke of his experience
as a CBC broadcaster when
Alberta was first made a
separate CBC region in 1972-73:
"The net result of the whole
initiative, which was supposed
to bring more programming
to this region, was that
they built another storey
on the building Out there
on 75th Street and added
another layer of bureaucracy.
No more programming was
made. In fact some disappeared.
So the reality that we face
in this country about CBC
regions is that it’s a sham.
The regions are not producing
programming because they
have no access to the network’s
schedule and they don’t
have any money with which
to produce."

In
December, 1987, the CRTC
granted the CBC a three-year
licence to provide a national,
24-hour all-news cable television
channel. Even as staunch
a defender of Toronto interests
(if not of the CBC) as The
Toronto Sun was moved
to call the decision "a
massive insult to independent
broadcasters, to Westerners
and all people whose hunger
for round-the-clock news
this channel is supposed
to satisfy." Edmonton broadcaster
Charles Allard, who also
applied for the licence
but was turned down by the
CRTC, spoke for many in
the region afterwards: "An
historic opportunity to
decentralize and diversify
electronic news and information
has been lost. The CBC now
has a stranglehold on television
news and public affairs
information in Canada and
this is not in the best
interest of our country."

The
CBC’s dominant role in the
news and current affairs
field of English television
broadcasting continues essentially
undisturbed and so do its
cultural and regional biases.
Its mandate to foster a
national spirit, to recognize
the truly multicultural
nature of the country and
to contribute to building
national unity continues
for the most part to be
honoured more often in the
breach, except for those
viewers who live near Highway
401 in southern Ontario.
The indifference of senior
CBC management to the other
regions has encouraged the
same attitude toward the
corporation among at least
some Western Canadians,
myself included, who would
prefer to be its friends.

1982
Constitutional Cake

It
is difficult toisolate
the full regional consequences
of the 1980-82 constitution-related
events, partly because many
Westerners concluded that
Pierre Trudeau’s constitutional
goals were closely allied
to those of his detested
NEP.

An
opinion survey of 1,370
residents of Western Canada
in October 1980 at about
the time the NEP was introduced
indicated that a disturbing
28% of them agreed that
"Western Canadians get so
few benefits from being
part of Canada that they
might as well go it on their
own." By March of 1981,
the mood had deteriorated
so much that a second survey
of Westerners on the same
question indicated that
36% agreed. In British Columbia,
support for this view had
risen from 29% in 1980 to
37%; among Albertans the
increase over the same period
was from 30% to an ominous
49%. Among Saskatchewan
and Manitoba respondents,
agreement actually declined
a little from 25% in October,
1980, to 23% in March, 1981.
Of equal concern, 61% of
persons in all four western
provinces surveyed in March,
1981 agreed with the statement,
"The West has sufficient
resources and industry to
survive without the rest
of Canada." Seventy-nine
percent of all Westerners
agreed with the companion
statement, "The West usually
gets ignored in national
politics because the political
parties depend upon Quebec
and Ontario for most of
their votes." Between October,
1980 and March, 1981 support
for outright western independence
grew from five percent to
seven percent, and eleven
percent in Alberta. Part
of the worsening western
attitude doubtless came
from both the process and
the substance of Trudeau’s
constitutional package.

What
happened between referendum
day in Quebec on May 20,
1980 and March, 1981? Almost
immediately after the rejection
of sovereignty association
by a majority of Quebeckers,
Liberal Justice Minister
Jean Chrétien visited all
provincial capitals except
Quebec City. All ten premiers
and Prime Minister Trudeau
agreed the next month on
a twelve-item agenda to
be studied over the summer.
In early July, however,
the federal government revealed
its new demand for greater
powers over the economy
if any other powers were
to be surrendered to the
provinces. A memorandum
from Michael Pitfield, clerk
of the Privy Council, was
leaked in the late summer
outlining a federal strategy
for unilateral patriation
of the constitution by Ottawa.

The
atmosphere darkened further
a few weeks later when the
eleven first ministers met
in Ottawa. A confidential
memorandum prepared by Michael
Kirby, an advisor to the
Prime Minister, giving some
constitutional options for
Ottawa, was also leaked,
causing a major uproar both
among the premiers and afterwards
with the public across the
country. Part of it suggested
that Alberta might be isolated
on the very sensitive western
issue of control of natural
resources on which the western
provinces were otherwise
united if the cabinet could
strike a deal with Premier
Blakeney of Saskatchewan.
It also outlined a strategy
by which the prime minister
might patriate the constitution
unilaterally, and attempt
to avoid a court challenge
as to whether unilateral
patriation was constitutional.
The Kirby memorandum implied
anything but good faith
in the process by the federal
cabinet. The televised first
ministers’ conference, whether
in consequence of this,
or because of competing
visions of the country,
or both, ended in a stalemate
on all twelve agenda items.

In
mid-September, 1981, a caucus
meeting of Liberal MPs and
senators ended with a declaration
by its chairman that the
caucus was "ready to go
to war." A few weeks later,
Prime Minister Trudeau indicated
on national television that
he would patriate the constitution
without provincial consent
and simultaneously have
enacted by the British Parliament
a charter of rights which
would apply in both the
federal and provincial jurisdictions.
Joe Clark on behalf of the
Progressive Conservative
Opposition denounced the
proposal on the same evening;
Edward Broadbent of the
New Democrats indicated
general support for the
package, thereby splitting
his own caucus on east-west
lines. Premier William Davis
of Ontario was so enthusiastic
about the prime minister’s
proposals that he urged
Conservative MPs to break
with their leader on the
issue, a suggestion that
would not soon be forgotten
by Western Canadians.

In
mid-October, all the ten
premiers met; five of them,
including western premiers
William Bennett, Peter Lougheed
and Sterling Lyon, said
that they would challenge
the government’s constitutional
proposal in the courts.
A Gallup poll released in
early December indicated
that 58% of Canadians
opposed Ottawa’s plan to
patriate without first obtaining
considerable provincial
support.

As
1981 began, Trudeau’s government
rewrote part of the charter
of rights to strengthen
it. The Conservative opposition
in the House moved at the
end of January that the
government’s constitutional
resolution before Parliament
be amended to specify that
the charter would not apply
to provincial jurisdiction
until the provincial legislatures
approved it by means of
a new constitutional amendment
formula. A committee of
the British Parliament considering
the issue recommended at
about the same date that
the Thatcher government
reject the package because
of the indicated lack of
provincial support. In mid-February,
four New Democrat MPs from
Saskatchewan announced that
they would vote against
the constitutional resolution,
now through public hearings
at committee level, for
the same reason. Premier
Blakeney, whom the federal
cabinet had attempted unsuccessfully
to win over with an additional
natural resources amendment,
announced that he too would
oppose the resolution.

By
mid-March, 1981, the New
Democrats dropped four points
in the Gallup poll and the
PCs were only five points
behind the Liberals. When
the government introduced
a form of closure in the
House of Commons in mid-March
on its constitutional resolution,
Conservative MPs began a
filibuster that lasted for
two entire weeks. It ended
only when the Newfoundland
Court of Appeal, differing
sharply from the majority
view of the Manitoba Appeal
Court on the same issues,
ruled unanimously that the
resolution was unconstitutional.
The government immediately
agreed to put off a final
vote until after the Supreme
Court of Canada decided
the issue. A Gallup poll
published in mid-May indicated
that 66% of both prairie
and B.C. residents in effect
opposed the government’s
proposal that the British
Parliament should be asked
to amend our constitution
and add a charter of rights,
before sending it to Canada.

In
mid-April all of the premiers
except for William Davis
and Richard Hatfield of
New Brunswick (the "Gang
of Eight") met and produced
an agreement calling for
patriation alone, the Alberta
amendment formula (which
required, for constitutional
amendments, resolutions
passed by Parliament and
the legislatures of seven
of the provinces containing
fifty percent of the national
population), and no charter
of rights. Under the amendment
formula favoured by Pierre
Trudeau and Edward Broad-bent,
the legislatures of Ontario
and Quebec alone would have
vetoes on any constitutional
amendment, whereas full
legislative support in fully
three Western and three
Atlantic provinces would
be required to stop a proposal.
The Federal-Provincial Relations
Office in Ottawa conceded
to me at the time that it
knew of no other federal
democracy in the world which
assigned, as proposed, differing
weight to residents of different
provinces for constitutional
amendment purposes. The
notion offended Western
Canadians deeply.

The
Supreme Court of Canada
ruled at the end of September,
by a majority of seven to
two, that the Trudeau package
was legal, but six of the
nine judges also said that
it was contrary to our constitutional
conventions. A first-ministers’
conference was set for early
November, 1981 to attempt
one last time to seek an
agreement. During the late
night of November 4th, a
compromise was reached which
was acceptable to all first
ministers except René Levesque.
This package quickly passed
the House of Commons, Senate,
and British Parliament and
was proclaimed by Queen
Elizabeth in mid-April 1982
at a large outdoor ceremony
on Parliament Hill in Ottawa.

The
price in terms of national
cohesion was painfully high
in the West. Even those
of us who favoured an entrenched
charter of rights, on the
premise that some basic
rights should not depend
on the result of any elections,
were deeply troubled. We
felt that a so-called national
government which held our
region in barely concealed
contempt had tried to relegate
us to second-class status
in its preferred amendment
formula. Not very many Westerners
cheered the proclamation
of the new constitution
despite the widespread western
support at the time for
an entrenched Charter of
Rights and Freedoms. The
active role of Saskatchewan’s
Allan Blakeney and Roy Romanow
in the final compromise
and the insult thrown at
them -- "Western Liberals"
-- contributed to the overwhelming
defeat of the Blakeney government
in the April, 1982 Saskatchewan
election. A separatist MLA,
Gordon Kesler, who campaigned
in part on the view that
the new constitution would
remove Canadians’ right
to own property, was actually
elected in an Alberta by-election
in Olds-Didsbury. Peter
Lougheed later recognized
that the federal government’s
refusal under New Democratic
pressure to include a property
rights’ provision in the
Charter of Rights contributed
to Kesler’s victory.

The
issue of an "alternative
constitutional vision,"
in Roger Gibbins’s phrase,
was probably nowhere a burning
western issue during the
1980-82 period because of
our severe economic difficulties.
The long-standing inability
of majoritarian parliamentary
government to address the
problems of the West had
not yet ignited a movement
to reform central institutions
such as the House of Commons
and Senate. A consequence
of this was that none of
the western premiers sought
institutional reforms; nor
did either of the opposition
parties in the House of
Commons. The British Columbia
government did push for
Senate reform, but won little
support from any other quarter.
The earliest constitutional
proposals of Prime Minister
Trudeau, most notably his
amendment formula, did nothing
but entrench regional conflict.
The final amendment formula
endorsed by all four western
premiers reinforced the
perception that provincial
governments alone speak
for their voters in national
affairs because future constitutional
amendments became solely
the prerogative of the eleven
legislatures. Any citizen
participation in the process
as present in other federal
democracies (Australia and
Switzerland, for example)
was excluded.

In
terms of the more fundamental
problem of effective western
representation in national
institutions, the Constitutional
Act of 1982 achieved absolutely
nothing. The subject was
not even on the agenda.
Nothing was done to initiate
a more effective role for
western MPs in policy-making,
to weaken party discipline,
or to ensure that national
institutions became more
sensitive to regional concerns.
Nor did it set in motion
the process of meaningful
reform to the Canadian political
system. "In the Constitution
Act," concludes Gibbins,
"we missed the opportunity
to organize regional conflict
out of the political system,
or at least to reorder our
institutional life so that
regional conflict could
be moderated and contained.
Instead, the Constitution
Act takes a troubled political
past and casts it in constitutional
cement for an uncertain
future." Many Westerners
agree.

Meech
Lake

The
Meech Lake constitutional
accord, which achieved the
very important goal of bringing
Quebec into the constitutional
family, represents the loss
of another opportunity to
reform national institutions
so that regional interests
can be represented effectively
by national politicians
within national institutions.
As a result, many Western
Canadians feel strongly
that the 1987 accord does
not adequately address our
own long-term concerns and
aspirations.

A
process by which eleven
first ministers, relying
on party discipline to obtain
majority support in their
legislatures later on, exercised
exclusive control over constitution-making
should be unacceptable to
all Canadian democrats.
Western Canadians who know
our own constitutional history
can only say "Amen" to the
objections raised by the
Yukon and Northwest Territories
governments and by native
leaders. The Report of the
Special Joint Committee
of the Senate and House
of Commons examining the
Meech Lake proposal, perhaps
acknowledging that their
public hearings had been
little more than a charade,
conceded that in future
both "legislators and the
public must be encouraged
to participate in the process
of constitutional change
before and not after First
Ministers meet to make decisions."
The constitutional process
is too important to be left
to first ministers exclusively
ever again.

In
replacing the seven-province
amendment formula of the
1982 agreement- with a unanimity
rule for all changes involving
institutions like the Senate
-- each province now has
an absolute veto over Senate
reform. In practice, this
could freeze the status
quo for institutions which
Western Canadians want reformed,
so that Canadians in all
regions will for once feel
themselves to be full and
equal partners in Confederation.
The Meech Lake accord also
says that the government
of a province "may" submit
names to fill Senate vacancies
arising in the interval
before our first ministers
can achieve the Senate reform
which is mandated in the
accord. The federal government,
says the agreement, "shall"
appoint new senators from
the names submitted by the
provinces. What happens
if a province refuses to
submit any names is left
unsaid.

The
constitutional reform committee
of the Canada West Foundation
says that "giving the premiers
a share of the Senate pork
barrel represents more than
just the tragedy of a squandered
opportunity: it is the Achilles
heel of the Meech Lake Accord,
a move that will seriously
limit the capacities of
Canada’s national government
while paralyzing any attempt
to repair or contain the
damage." The committee thus
urged all provincial governments
to provide no names of would-be
senators until meaningful
reforms "have been ratified,
and tied to a timetable
and a procedure for drawing
up those amendments." Others,
myself included, have argued
that if one province would
fill its next senate vacancy
by means of a province-wide
election, then other provinces
would soon be obliged by
public opinion to follow
suit as proved to be the
result when progressive
Oregon first began to elect
its U.S. Senators in state-wide
elections. The momentum
toward a fully elected Senate
might quickly become unstoppable.
Should this occur, one of
the major weaknesses of
Meech Lake might be overcome.